A RARE FIRST EDITION BEING THE STORY OF JOAQUIN MILLER'S PACIFIC POEMS (1871) University of California Berkeley Gift of ROBERT B. HONE YM AN, JR. A RARE FIRST EDITION BEING THE STORY OF JOAQUIN MILLER'S PACIFIC POEMS (1871) OF WHICH ONLY TWO COPIES ARE AT PRESENT KNOWN WALTER M. HILL CHICAGO 1915 One hundred copies privately printed of which this is THE TORCH PRESS CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA PACIFIC POEMS PACIFIC POEMS Collectors of first editions of Ameri can authors have often had their curios ity piqued by the postscript appended by Joaquin Miller to his Songs of the Sierras, London, 1871. This cryptic statement read: "The foregoing is the preface to a thin book printed here last winter, but not published further than to send less than half-a-dozen copies to the press. As the reader sometimes is curi ous to know the origin of a new book, and this includes almost all that could be sought, I let it stand. ' ' Certainly the in formation thus given is not particularly illuminating, and up to the present time little more has been known. Very few collectors or dealers have ever seen a copy of the "thin book" referred to. A fortunate combination of circumstances, however, has recently revealed the true story of the little book. The facts re garding it, as we now know them, are, it is believed, of sufficient interest to war rant passing them on to those collectors who are wise enough to include in their pastime the pleasant habit of annotating their private catalogues and inserting bibliographical or literary notes in their copies of famous or rare books. Joaquin Miller's "thin book" was a little duodecimo volume bound in green cloth, (xii) + 107 pages in extent, en titled Pacific Poems. It was put into type, probably at the author's expense, during the early months of 1871. So far as we have been able to ascertain only one copy has ever before been publicly offered for sale by a dealer. This was the copy offered in Mr. J. F. Drake's catalogue No. 78 (1914), item no. 97. With an easily pardonable enthusiasm that genial bibliophile as well as biblio pole described it as probably the only one in existence. A wariness doubtless learned through hard experience led him to use that saving word "probably." For, nine times out of ten, let a book seller or collector describe a print ed work as "unique" or "probably unique," and an ironical Fate at once rises up to prove him mistaken. Thus it has proved in the case of Pacific Poems. A second copy has come to light and in October, 1915, this was acquired by Mr. Walter M. Hill of Chicago. It is an attested fact of literary his tory that Joaquin Miller's early work was rather severely criticised by Amer ican reviewers. So, daring greatly, he sought the world's capital in the hope of finding there a sympathetic publisher for his first collected volume of verse. In London he was most hospitably re ceived in the highest literary and social circles. He found friends and helpful critics among the leading men of letters of the day and with one of them, Lord Houghton (Richard Monckton Milnes), he afterwards spent a winter in Greece tracing out the places hallowed by asso ciation with Byron whom he was accus tomed to call the Master. Another friend was Dean Stanley, and it is with him that this record of the new facts re garding Pacific Poems may fitly begin. Some time in the spring of 1871, at the home of Dean Stanley, Cincinnatus Hin- er Miller was introduced to a young Irish poet, one who is still living and who has made his mark in various fields of literary endeavor. From his pen, un der date of June 1st, 1915, there comes the following interesting narrative : "Dean Stanley introduced me to him as a brother poet likely to befriend a stranger in London. I called upon Mr. Miller, who was living in Whitechapel, and afterwards introduced my friend and compatriot, Mr. Greorge F. Savage Armstrong, to him. We became some what intimate, and soon gathered from Mr. Miller that he proposed publishing a volume of poems dealing with New Mexico. He showed us some of these poems, which he entitled * Pacific Poems/ in proof. We were both great ly struck with their originality and beau ty, but were forced to confess and tell him quite plainly that much of his metre was extremely faulty. He was annoyed but evidently impressed. One day he came to me and said, 'Look here, do you mind taking a passage this passage pointing to it in his proofs from my poem Oregonia, and putting it into what you call correct metre, but altering my words as little as possible.' I said 'By all means ! ' took the proof, and shortly afterwards sent it back to him corrected in the way asked for. Without telling Savage Armstrong that he had been to me on the subject, he made exactly the same request to him, asking him to cor rect the same passage in the same way, which Savage Armstrong accordingly did. After a day or two he wrote to each of us somewhat in these terms : 'I rather disbelieved what you two boys said about the metre of my poems, and so I put you both to the same test, and as curiously enough your revisions of the same passage came out just the same there must be something in your criti cism, and I have decided to revise my book on the lines suggested by you both. ' No doubt Miller was in a difficult position with his publishers, to whom he probably never explained why he found himself bound to withdraw Pacific Poems. How could he give himself away by saying it was due to their technical deficiency? In any case he does not say so in his post- cript to ' Songs of the Sierras,' a title suggested by Savage Armstrong, a vol ume of more than twice the length of Pa cific Poems, but embodying them in a re vised form. My friend George Francis Armstrong, like Joaquin Miller, has joined the great majority, so I have been unable to obtain his confirmation to the above statement, but his widow has writ ten to confirm my view of what happened between us and Miller, saying that 'he had assisted Miller to tune up his poems' and given him the title of ' Songs of the Sierras ' for his enlarged volume. ' ' At the end of the Preface to Pacific Poems Miller added the following: "P. S. I got the foregoing and the two fol lowing Poems in type, about half the con templated book, when I fortunately met with an able critic, who kindly looked over the proofs, and advised me not to publish. I shall follow his advice, for the fact of his being a critic does not de pend entirely on the fact that he never wrote a successful line in his life, but he has good judgment and a well balanced head ; in fact I know of nothing equal to the equilibrium of his mind, except, it may be, its stupidity. M." According ly, he abandoned the plan of publishing Pacific Poems, and, as he said in the pre face to Songs of the Sierras, less than half-a-dozen copies left his hands. The one concerning which this account has been written is made up as follows : Pa cific Poems / By Joaquin Miller. / (Pub lishers' Device) / London: / Whitting- ham And Wilkins. / 1871. / (xii) + 107 pages: P. (i), half-title, containing words "Pacific Poems' '; p. (ii), blank; p. (iii), title-page as above; p. (iv), blank; p. (v), dedication, "To Maud"; p. (vi), blank; pp. (vii)-x, Preface; p. (xi), Fly-title, "Arazonian"; p. (xii), containing twenty-seven lines of verse in italic type, beginning "Because the skies were blue, because"; pp. (1)-18, the poem entitled "Arazonian"; p. (19), Fly-title, "Oregonia"; p. (20), contain ing fifteen lines of verse, beginning, "Sad song of the wind in the moun tains"; pp. (21)-107, the dramatic poem entitled * ' Oregonia. ' ' This copy is the one presented to the "brother poet" to whom Miller was in troduced in Dean Stanley's drawing room and who wrote out the story of the results of their meeting as given above. Written in ink on the half-title is the in scription: A. Perceval Graves of the Isle of Erin from his friend C. H. Miller the California Savage. The revised volume, Songs of the Sier ras, was issued in the early summer of 1871 by Longmans, Green, Eeader and Dyer. A glance at the text of the poem Arasonian at once shows changes from that printed in the suppressed Pacific Poems. For example, in the latter, lines 12-13 read: And hope to ride on the billows of breasts, And hope to rest in the haven of bosoms. In Songs of the Sierras this becomes : And hope to ride on the billows of And hope to rest in the haven of breasts. Oregonia, the longest of the two pieces in Pacific Poems does not appear as such or under this title in Songs of the Sier ras. The poet seems to have worked over the subject matter of Oregonia anew, changed his metrical scheme en tirely, as well as the names of the char acters (except one, Lamonte), and given the rewritten poem a new title, Ina. The version in Pacific Poems opens thus: SCENE I A hacienda in the Sacramento. S ANTON A standing alone, looking on the moonlit moun tains. SANTONA Diabla looms like a sea-girt isle above The rolling clouds that break in foam of snow; Beyond, the buttes lie flashing in the moon, Like silver tents pitch 'd in the fields of heaven, While still beyond, Sierra 's gleaming peaks, Wrapped in their shrouds of everlasting snow, Do stand in line as I look heavenward, Like mighty mile-stones on the way to God. In Ina this becomes : SCENE I A Hacienda near Tezcuco, Mexico. Young DON CABLOS alone, looking out on the moonUt mountains. DON CARLOS Popocatapetl looms lone like an island Above the white cloud-waves that break up against him ; Around him white buttes in the moon light are flashing, Like silver tents pitch M in the fields of heaven ; While standing in line, in their snows ever lasting, Flash peaks as my eyes into heaven are lifted, Like milestones that lead to the City Eternal. These extracts sufficiently illustrate the nature and extent of the changes made by Miller as a result of the crit icism of Messrs. Armstrong and Graves. The Songs of the Sierras was reviewed in the Athenaeum, amongst other jour nals, sympathetically but discriminating ly. In its number for June 3, 1871, the Athenaeum said: "Although we cannot give Mr. Miller a front place in the hier archy of modern poets, we are glad to welcome him as a true and original sing er. t Songs of the Sierras' is a volume which must be read by all lovers of real poetry. The poems show traces of the influences of our best modern poets. Mr. Miller is, however, no copyist. . . . He resembles Browning in novel and apt metaphors taken from objects high or low, common or uncommon, but always new and forcible, and often quaint making one smile at the sudden turn." After the appearance of this volume, says one who was in close touch with the poet, life became easier and he was sought after by the great both in Europe and his own country. The copy of Songs of the Sierras which he presented to Mr. Graves is preserved along with that of the Pacific Poems, and its half- title bears the inscription: To one of my first and firmest friends in London. Joaquin Miller. June 24. 71. These two volumes, around which cluster so many memories of friendship and liter ary association, are treasures which every collector of American first editions would surely delight to possess. c